Comments (13 Comments)

I guess Team Canada wants to lose potentially putting all these Florida Panthers on their roster along with an AHL coach. Weiss and Horton are used to losing. They are comfortable with it. For them it is almost expected. Winning is shock and a surprise for them. One can imagine how that will play out on the world championships stage.

Here is the story the Panthers don’t want you to see – Horton and asst. coach Kitchen had a confrontation at practice over Horton supposedly interfering with a drill Kitchen was running at center ice. But I listed to a story about it on CBC Hockey Night in Canada radio and supposedly this goes far deeper. It’s apparently not the first run in between Horton and the coaching staff and there is supposed to be some underlying issues overall with some players and the coaches. A comment about the confrontation is on TSN’s web site.

I am sure there is more to the story. This joke of a franchise rarely tells the truth. We usually have to wait for real journalists to get the inside story or we wait until a player gets traded to another team before we finally hear the truth. For example, we only learned the truth behind the botched Luongo, Jokinen, and Bouwmeester trades after the trades were done instead of while they were still here. This is because players can’t speak openly to the media, local hockey journalists down here don’t get the inside scoop like Canadian hockey journalists, and the franchise will never admit there is a problem even if the entire lockerroom is melting down. This is nothing new. Business as usual for the Florida Panthers.

HARVEY FIALKOV, a tennis-playing sportswriter who grew up in Long Island following the dynastic Islanders, is the new Panthers beat writer for the Sun Sentinel and looking forward to writing about the best professional sports team in Broward County.